WebProNews

Tag: Organic Reach

  • More Facebook News Feed Ranking Changes

    More Facebook News Feed Ranking Changes

    Facebook announced new changes to how it ranks content in the News Feed. For one, they’re giving more weight to the time a user spends viewing the content. The company says it has learned that the time people chose to spend reading or watching content they clicked on from the News Feed is an important signal that the story was interesting to them.

    This seems like something that would’ve been realized ages ago, but here we are. The signal actually predicts how long you will spend looking at an article in the mobile browser or an Instant Article after you have clicked through.

    “This update to ranking will take into account how likely you are to click on an article and then spend time reading it,” Facebook’s Moshe Blanks and Jie Xu say in a joint blog post. “We will not be counting loading time towards this — we will be taking into account time spent reading and watching once the content has fully loaded. We will also be looking at the time spent within a threshold so as not to accidentally treat longer articles preferentially.”

    Facebook believes the change will help it better understand which articles might be interesting to users based on how long they (and others) read them, so users will be more likely to see stories they’re interested in.

    The change only factors in the time people spend reading an article regardless of whether that time spent is reading an Instant Article or an article in the mobile web browser.

    Another change involves the diversity of page posts.

    “We’ve also heard from people that they enjoy reading articles from a wide range of publishers, and it can be repetitive if too many articles from the same source are back to back in their News Feed,” the Facebookers say. “We’ll also be making an update to reduce how often people see several posts in a row from the same source in their News Feed.”

    Facebook says the update has already begun rolling out, and that it will continue to do so over the coming weeks. Most pages won’t see significant changes, it says, while some may see minor increases or decreases in traffic.

    As usual, you’re encouraged to peruse the publishing best practices.

  • 2 Years After Highly-Publicized Facebook Breakup, Eat24 Page Becomes ‘Yelp Eat24’

    Back in 2014, Eat24 made a lot of headlines when it publicly “broke up” with Facebook. In response to the decline in organic reach that the page (and many others) were facing at the time (causing Pages to have to pay for reach), Eat24, which had 70,000 Facebook fans, opted to leave the social network.

    While essentially, it was just a story about one company quitting Facebook, it captured the marketing world’s attention because it represented the growing frustration among many, many businesses on Facebook. Granted, they didn’t shut down the page. They just stopped posting.

    About a year ago, Yelp announced that it had bought Eat24 for $134 million. I questioned at the time whether Yelp would allow the brand to remain off of Facebook, which continues to be such an important place to have an Internet presence. So far, the newest post on the Eat24 Page is still the breakup letter. that may soon change, however.

    A few minutes ago, I got this notification out of the blue:

    Screen Shot 2016-01-15 at 2.35.50 PM

    What is a Page that has broken up with Facebook doing messing around with name changes?

    Yep, it looks like Yelp Eat24 is now on Facebook. There still aren’t any new posts, but the Page’s cover photo does feature the Yelp branding.

    While the breakup cost the page some fans, it does still have over 67,000. While it’s hard to say for sure, I’m guessing that these fans will soon have some new content to digest. But will Yelp fork out the money to increase post reach?

    The Eat24 site currently does not have a link to its Facebook page. Right now it only shows Twitter and Instagram.

  • Organic Facebook Page Like Growth Sinks

    Organic Facebook Page Like Growth Sinks

    Facebook Pages didn’t have the greatest year in 2015 if a new study is any indication. Locowise is sharing data looking at page growth, post reach, and engagement on the social network throughout the past eight months, and when it comes to the organic growth of Page likes, December saw the lowest rate yet.

    Has this been an area of concern for your Facebook presence? Discuss.

    Here’s a quick look at the numbers across page growth, page reach, and post engagement reach from May to December:

    Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 1.38.38 PM

    As you can see, it’s a little disconcerting across the board.

    “If you do want to grow your page audience in the year 2016 you simply do need to use paid advertising,” says Locowise’s Marko Saric. “Don’t get your hopes up that creating amazing content will get you there on its own.”

    At least post reach has risen over the past couple months, but it’s still well below what it was in May.

    Paid post reach is down significantly from May as well:

    Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 1.43.02 PM

    “The best organic way to optimize your post reach in 2016 is by using the post format that has the highest reach. This is on top of posting on the best day of the week and the time of the day,” says Saric.

    Here’s the study’s data by post format for reach and engagement rate:

    Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 1.44.54 PM

    Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 1.45.22 PM

    Reach and engagement are down from May across all post formats, except for Status, where engagement rate is slightly up (though still down from more recent months).

    You can see the full report here.

    We recently looked at some research from Socialbakers, which found that when it comes to Facebook posts, shares appear to be significantly more important than either likes or comments, when it comes to increasing your reach and audience. So keep that in mind if you’re looking for more viral reach (this refers to those who saw a story in their News Feed or Ticker only because of one or more of their friends interacted with it).

    Despite it being harder to organically grow your Facebook audience, Facebook has been adding business-friendly features to Pages.

    Last month, Facebook said that over 50 million businesses are now using Facebook Pages and that these pages see 2.5 billion comments each month.

    The company also announced that you can now set the average time it takes for your page to reply to messages. This could be “within minutes,” “within an hour,” “within hours,” or “within a day”. There’s also a redesigned inbox that gives businesses more info about their customers and an easier way to respond to and keep track of comments in the form of a tool under the new Activity tab. You can flag interactions for follow-up, reply privately, mark them as done, etc.

    All of this is still in the process of rolling out.

    Does the data reflect your Page’s experience? Are you seeing more success with certain post types? Discuss in the comments.

    Images via Facebook, Locowise, Socialbakers

  • Facebook Pages Start Displaying Reach, Clicks Under Posts

    Facebook Pages Start Displaying Reach, Clicks Under Posts

    Facebook is showing Page admins how well their posts are doing in a new way. You can now see the number of people reached and the number of clicks on any given post. This includes organic reach.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-17 at 1.23.01 PM

    This information appears below the post on the Pages’ Timeline, as well as in the News Feed, and on the singular post if you go to its URL. You can easily view additional insights or boost the post from there.

    As a Page admin, its nice to see this information in a prominent way at a glance, and I could see it leading to more posts being boosted, which will obviously work in Facebook’s favor.

    It’s unclear if this is a limited test or if it’s rolling out to all admins, but we’re seeing it personally, and others are starting to report on it as well.

    Image via Facebook

  • Facebook Pages See Decreased Engagement [Report]

    Facebook Pages saw slight growth in organic likes in July, according to a report from Locowise, which studied 5,000 pages. Growth was 0.21% in July, which was up from 0.2% growth in May.

    page-likes

    “This number was at 0.1% for the largest pages, those with over 1 million page likes,” says Locowise’s Marko Saric. “Even the smallest pages, those with less than a thousand page likes, had a difficult time growing organically with a 0.3% growth of page likes. This confirms once again that Facebook is now a pay to play platform, especially if you’re looking into page growth.”

    The report also found that 54.05% of the largest pages use Facebook advertising.

    “41.12% of all pages we looked at in our study used Facebook ads paying for 28.56% of the total reach. This is a small decrease compared to 43.36% we saw using ads in the month of May,” adds Saric. “Facebook “54.05% of pages with over 1 million page likes used advertising, paying for 29.94% of their reach. This is a 12% increase compared to May where 48.28% of the largest pages were using ads.”

    Meanwhile, it finds that organic post reach and engagement rates are down with average post reach at 8.24% of the total page audience. That’s down from 8.34% in May. For the biggest pages it was 6.66% and for the smallest pages it was 13.85%.

    Average engagement rate was 6.27%, down 6% from May. For the biggest pages it was 6.73% but down 25% from May.

    As the report notes, the new “See First” feature recently announced by Facebook could help pages boost organic reach if they’re able to convince fans to enable it.

    Check out the report here. It gets more into Facebook’s video and ecommerce efforts in addition to more insights about the previously discussed topics.

    Last month, we looked at research from Adobe, which found that people are interacting more with links.

    Image via Locowise

  • Facebook Pages May Start Seeing More Hides In Their Insights

    Facebook announced a new tweak to its News Feed algorithm, which deals specifically with how people hide stories. Essentially, there are some people that hide a lot of stories. Most don’t hide many, but a small, unspecified amount of Facebook users hide a lot more than others. The update reflects this specific small group of users.

    Facebook explains in an announcement:

    Many people choose to hide stories they don’t like, but most people do this only occasionally. Hiding something is usually a strong indication that someone didn’t want to see a particular post. There is also a small group of people on Facebook who hide a very high number of stories in their News Feed. In fact, some people hide almost every post in their News Feed, even after they’ve liked or commented on posts. For this group of people, “hide” isn’t as strong a negative signal, and in fact they may still want to see similar stories to the ones they’ve hidden in the future.
    To do a better job of serving this small group, we made a small update to News Feed so that, for these people only, we don’t take “hide” into account as strongly as before. As a result, this group of people has started seeing more stories from the Pages and friends they are connected to than in the past. Overall, this tweak helps this group see more of the stuff they are interested in.

    Facebook says it doesn’t expect Pages to see any significant changes in distribution, but does say they may see an increase in the Hides metric in their Insights. This is because the small group of users who hide a lot of stories will start seeing more stories, which means they’ll probably continue to keep hiding a large percentage of them.

    Facebook does tell Pages on in their Insights that hides can decrease the number of people they reach, but from the sound of it, the new update won’t hurt you much in that department.

    Good news for Pages sharing a lot of content is that people are interacting with links more on Facebook, according to a recent study from Adobe.

    Image via Facebook

  • People Are Interacting With Links More On Facebook

    People Are Interacting With Links More On Facebook

    It looks like links are getting better for interactions on Facebook as interactions on other post types are on the decline.

    Have you seen better reach and/or interactions with your links than you were seeing in the past? Let us know in the comments.

    Adobe’s Social Intelligence Report looks at social media patterns throughout Q2. It finds that “recent algorithm changes” have led to declining interaction rates in all industries while interaction with links on Facebook continues to grow. Other post types are “slow to respond” to those changes, it says.

    Here’s what social interaction rate looks like by industry:

    Screen shot 2015-07-17 at 10.52.29 AM

    And social interaction rate by post type:

    As you can see, images are still getting the most interaction, but links are now on par with video in this area.

    Screen shot 2015-07-17 at 10.55.12 AM

    A couple months ago, we looked at a study from Simply Measured finding that Facebook status update engagement was down 72%.

    “Links and photos dominate when it comes to overall engagement, but video and photos are the post types to keep an eye on if you want your content to spread more widely on Facebook,” the report said. “Top brands are investing less in status updates and yielding less engagement from this type of post.”

    Media brands were most successful with links as a post type, it found.

    “Retail brands have experienced lower engagement quarter-over-quarter, but higher engagement year-over-year,” that report said. “Retail brands excel with links and videos, and eBay does especially well among its peers in this vertical. This vertical responds to fans the most.”

    Socialbakers found earlier this year that links were getting better average organic reach than photos, but not as much as status updates or video.

    Facebook is testing a feature with some Facebook Pages, which would make it easier for them to get a better read on what types of posts are working. This would be a “View Insights” button that appears on posts. It tells you how many people the post reached, how that compared to the average, and how many clicks it received. You can already see insights on posts in the current Insights tab for the page, but seeing it on each post should prove all the more helpful.

    Anther study we recently looked at found that Pages are seeing increased organic reach, which is certainly some welcome news after the last year or two. The data from Locowise, which analyzed 5,000 pages, found that the average reach per post for Pages had increased by 103% month-over-month. Here’s what page reach share looked like by post in that study. Links were just behind videos:

    Facebook has recently added some feature that could help links even more. For one, the new “add a link” feature encourages users to share links that are already on Facebook.

    Interest targeting lets Pages target their links to the people that will have the best chance of clicking them.

    Facebook is also giving users a way to prioritize certain friends and pages in their News Feeds. A Page that can convince users to prioritize their content has the potential to see a great deal of potential with the links they share.

    Check out Adobe’s full report here.

    Have you found links to be performing better than they used to? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Adobe, Socialbakers, Locowise, Facebook

  • Facebook Pages Are Seeing Increased Organic Reach

    I realize this isn’t the type of headline you’ve become accustomed to over he past year or two. Facebook Pages have by and large seen the organic reach of most of their posts fall considerably as competition for News Feed space has increased and Facebook itself has repeatedly adjusted its algorithm.

    How have your organic reach numbers been in the past month or two? Have you seen any improvement? Let us know.

    A new study, however, finds that he average reach per post for Pages has increased by 103% month-over-month. More interesting yet is that this has occurred while there has also been a 58% decrease in engagement per post.

    These numbers come from Locowise, which analyzed 5,000 pages and their growth, reach and engagement results in May.

    “The average reach per post for pages we looked at was at 8.34% of all page likes in the month of May. This is a 103% increase compared to the 4.11% in April, and is very positive news for brands struggling to reach their audience organically,” the report says. “The larger the page the less organic reach there is per post though. For pages with over 1,000,000 likes the average reach was 6.62% while for the smallest pages the reach was 14.88% of their audience.”

    “The reach per post may be up but the engagement per post is down,” it continues. “The average engagement per post was at 6.61% of people reached. This is a 58% decrease compared to the 15.58% engagement we saw in April. The largest pages (those with over 1 million likes) had an above-average engagement of 8.92% of people reached. This means that the average engagement per post is at 0.55% of all page likes, which again is poor compared to the 2.81% engagement of total following that we see on Instagram.”

    This certainly isn’t the first time in recent memory we’ve heard about how much better engagement has been for brands on Instagram compared to Facebook.

    The study found that Pages saw an 11% increase in Page likes from April to May. Over 43% of Pages are using Facebook ads. They’re effectively buying nearly 32% of their reach.

    “Brands are realising that paid advertising is a great solution for their goals of growing a page and reaching a new audience,” the report says. “This is actually a 503% increase compared to only 7.19% of pages we saw using ads in April.”

    Facebook announced in February that it had over two million active advertisers (here’s a look at some improvements it has made to its ad products on the way to that number). Just this week, it made its Ads Manager app available on Android, enabling many more of their advertisers to manage their ads from their mobile devices (it was previously available for iOS). This will likely only contribute to increased Facebook advertising.

    When it comes to organic reach, videos are reaching more users than any other type of post. In February, Socialbakers shared some data showing this:

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    If the Locowise study is any indication, videos are only doing better than they were then:

    resource-fb-may-reach

    It’s definitely worth comparing the other post types in these two charts. Status updates seem to not be going so far, while links appear to be doing better. Facebook recently launched an “Add a Link” feature, which will only encourage more link sharing.

    While videos may lead the pack in reach, they’re still not seeing the engagement of photos, according to the study, which have 7.06% of people reached engaging on average compared to videos at 6.61%. Links are at 4.37% with status updates at 3.34%.

    It’s worth noting that since the month when these numbers were collected, Facebook has announced that it will begin taking some other things into account when ranking content in News Feed. These include the time people spend on posts and specific video actions, such as unmuting and enabling HD.

    Have you seen increased organic reach on your posts? Have you increased your Facebook advertising efforts? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Facebook, Socialbakers, Locowise

  • Facebook Might Give Users More Control over News Feed

    Facebook is still testing ways to let users prioritize particular friends and pages in their news feed – something that could be good news for all the pages out there that continue to suffer from reach issues.

    TechCrunch spotted a new test feature called ‘See First’ which allows users to designate certain people and pages to “see first” on top of their news feed.

    Users would be able to select one of three news feed visibility options for friends and pages – unfollow, default, or See First. If See First is selected, that person or page’s new content will always appear at the top of your news feed.

    Facebook gave this statement:

    “We are always exploring new ways to improve the Facebook experience, and are currently running a small test of a feature that lets you indicate that you’d like to see posts from a specific person or Page at the top of your News Feed.”

    This new test is just a tweak on another test Facebook ran back in April. A few months ago, the company prompted users atop their news feeds to “pick friends and pages and see their posts at the top of News Feed.” Facebook advertised it as a way to “see more of what you love.”

    Of course, we talked about how this could be very, very good for pages:

    Facebook can’t show you everything from every friend and page you follow. Anyone with a page knows how Facebook’s organic reach has plummeted over the past year or so. Facebook says that it does not filter posts from friends, however, and all you have to do to see every single thing every single friend posts is to scroll down far enough.

     

    Of course, that’s not really feasible. Facebook’s algorithms, which weigh the importance of posts on a variety of factors, should take into account how close you are to said person (through interactions) when sorting your News Feed.

     

    But this would be one surefire way to tell Facebook that you never, under any circumstances, want to miss a post by a specific person or page.

     

    Facebook already does something like this for friends. You can still add friends to a “close friends” list, “to see more of them in your News Feed and get notified each time they post.” The notifications are optional.

     

    But this could be really good news for pages, who continue to suffer with visibility. Recently, Facebook announced a tweak to News Feed that would show users more content from friends, and even less from pages.

     

    But if Facebook allows people to designate pages whose content they under no circumstances want to miss, it could help those pages, at least in theory, get more reach.

    Facebook appears to be testing multiple ways to give user more control over their news feed. If Facebook does indeed roll this feature out wide, pages will need to make sure their content is awesome enough that people will want to designate it at “See First”.

  • Facebook Is Rolling Out Another News Feed Algorithm Change

    Facebook announced that it’s rolling out another change to its News Feed algorithm that takes into account the time users spend on stories.

    Long story short, if users spend more time looking at a post, Facebook is going to assume that such a post is of interest. In other words, it’s not just about the liking, commenting, and sharing of the post.

    “There are times when, for example, people want to see information about a serious current event, but don’t necessarily want to like or comment on it,” Facebook says in a blog post. “Based on this finding, we are updating News Feed’s ranking to factor in a new signal—how much time you spend viewing a story in your News Feed.”

    “When talking to people about the way they use their News Feed, we’ve found that it’s not as simple as just measuring the number of seconds you spend on each story to understand if that piece of content resonated with you. Some people may spend ten seconds on a story because they really enjoy it, while others may spend ten seconds on a story because they have a slow internet connection. We’ve discovered that if people spend significantly more time on a particular story in News Feed than the majority of other stories they look at, this is a good sign that content was relevant to them.”

    “For example, you may scroll quickly through your News Feed and like a photo of your friend’s graduation, followed by sharing a funny post from your sister,” the company continues. “You keep scrolling and happen upon a post your cousin shared detailing everything she did and saw on her recent trip. Her post even includes a photo. You spend time reading her post and the interesting discussion about the best places to eat that had broken out in the comments on this post, but you don’t feel inclined to like or comment on it yourself. Based on the fact that you didn’t scroll straight past this post and it was on the screen for more time than other posts that were in your News Feed, we infer that it was something you found interesting and we may start to surface more posts like that higher up in your News Feed in the future.

    The change is already rolling out, but it will take weeks to complete. The good news for Pages worried about taking a major blow to their reach is that Facebook says it doesn’t expect Pages to see significant changes in distribution. I guess that’s bad news (or at least non-news) for those hoping to get more distribution for their insightful content.

    Image via The Official Grumpy Cat (Facebook)

  • Is Facebook More Small Business-Friendly Than You Thought?

    Facebook is dedicating more resources to trying to stay in the good graces of small businesses, even after it has continually made changes to its News Feed algorithm over the past year and a half, which have largely been detrimental to them.

    Do you think Facebook can still be a valuable asset to small businesses despite the organic reach issue? Let us know in the comments.

    According to the company, there are 40 million small businesses using Facebook, and last year, it enabled $227 billion of economic impact and 4.5 million jobs globally.

    Its latest small business efforts involve a new series of educational events and live chat support for advertisers.

    “Boost Your Business”

    First off, Facebook announced the 2015 Boost Your Business program, which is made up of a series of half-day and 2-hour pop up events, which will educate small businesses on best practices and the “latest marketing strategies and tools”.

    The company has partnered with famed Facebook marketing consultant Mari Smith, MailChimp, Shopify, Visa, and Zenefits to help with the events. Facebook’s own director of small business Jonathan Czaja will also be in attendance.

    The half-day events feature a small business panel and Q&A session moderated by Smith, a small business networking center in which attendees can speak with panelists, a “learn-how zone” with educational videos, Facebook/partner counters where attendees can speak with industry experts, two Facebook learning tracks (one on growing online sales and one on driving in-store sales), and partner sessions which attendees can choose from hosted by MailChimp, Shopify, and Visa. These events will also feature a keynote speech from Czaja.

    The half-day events cost $25 per ticket, and include a $50 Facebook ad coupon on arrival.

    The two-hour pop-up events include a network expo with small business organizations, the chance to meet business leaders and decision makers from the community, presentations of Facebook best practices, local small business panels, and the chance to win one of three $500 ad credit giveaways.

    Facebook describes Mari Smith as “one of the worlds most influential and knowledgeable new media thought leaders and one of Facebook’s top marketing experts.”

    She recently spoke with WebProNews about how businesses can utilize some of Facebook’s newer features in what could be a semi-preview of the types of things she’ll discuss at the events.

    In light of the organic reach blow Facebook has dealt to Facebook pages, we asked Smith at the time if she still sees Facebook as a viable platform for marketing a small business (especially one with a low marketing budget).

    She said, “Yes – I would recommend that low budget be allocated to what are called ‘dark posts.’ That is, ads in the News Feed that look like a Page wall post, but don’t actually appear on the Page. With very granular targeting to reach the exact target market, small businesses can do exceptionally well using Facebook. In addition, making use of custom audiences is a must. This is where a business can upload its own email database, or segments thereof, and place ads in the News Feed to that target group. Plus, using website custom audiences helps a business to retarget its website visitors with Facebook ads.”

    “Facebook recently introduced a new ad feature called ‘Conversion Lift Measurement’ to help advertisers track better ROI, especially offline sales,” she added. “Although the new metric is only available to select large advertisers, this is great news for small businesses when the feature eventually becomes available.”

    More on Conversion Lift Management here.

    “In addition, we’ll soon see the rollout of Facebook’s ‘Atlas’ advertising product that allows retargeting and tracking via mobile devices,” Smith said. “Retargeting typically works via cookies; however, cookies don’t work on mobile. The way Atlas works, is advertisers can then place ads to remarket to visitors whether they view on desktop, mobile or tablet. In other words, reaching the exact audience no matter what device they’re on.”

    “Page owners may wish to try out the new organic Interest Targeting feature to see if that helps create a greater reach,” she continued. “Prior to publishing a piece of content, admins can pre-select subsets of their fanbase. Another recent change is the ability to create a Post End Date – this stops a post from showing in News Feed at the specific time/date that you wish. Handy for, as Facebook states, ‘a publisher can use this to remove yesterday’s weather report from News Feed.’”

    We talked more about these features in an article here.

    Smith will only be appearing at the four half-day events in San Diego, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Boston. She had this to say on her website with regards to the event series:

    I’ve been a raving evangelist of the power of Facebook – specifically for business use – since I first joined the platform on May 4th, 2007. My 8th anniversary of being on Facebook (my ‘Faceversary’!) is coming up. This is truly the perfect timing for me to work directly with Facebook to support the deeper education of small and medium sized businesses – something I’m very passionate about, having lead numerous Facebook marketing live and virtual trainings for many years.

    As you know, there’s been innumerable changes to Facebook’s business pages, ads and News Feed algorithm over the years. What works for businesses in today’s Facebook world is very different to what worked even last year.

    I have long believed that the best antidote to lackluster results on Facebook is education. And, not just training on how to use the Facebook (ad) products; but a full-on integrated online marketing approach that includes optimized landing pages, lead generation, email marketing and customer relationship and retention strategies.

    Boost Your Business isn’t Facebook’s only new effort to educate businesses about getting more out of Facebook. About a month ago, Facebook announced BluePrint, a program that trains marketers on how to create better campaigns that “drive business results”.

    It’s kind of like a Khan Academy for Facebook marketing, and includes 40 learning paths/modules that can be accessed from desktop or mobile. They’re available to anyone with a Facebook account. Here’s a look at the different courses.

    Online Chat Support

    As mentioned earlier, Facebook is also launching online chat support for small business advertisers. They can access this by clicking “Get Help” on the Facebook for Business website. They can chat and screen share with a trained Ads Specialists and get “quick” answers to their Facebook advertising questions, according to the company.

    The feature will roll out in the US, UK, and Ireland for now, and will be made available to additional countries later in the year. Facebook says it will also test mobile chat and phone support this year.

    According to TechCrunch, Czaja says Facebook has “hundreds of reps” handling email and chat support, and that the company intends to grow that number “dramatically” in the coming years.

    Facebook Wants Businesses To Do More

    Facebook doesn’t just want to educate businesses and give them more tools. They also want businesses to “make themselves useful” as the Wall Street Journal reports. From that:

    Now, Facebook wants businesses to beef up their offerings, said vice president of small business Dan Levy. That could mean helping users book flights, get directions or schedule an appointment with a plumber. “We’re in the process of making a lot of updates to pages,” Levy said. “Increasingly the utility of pages for people and businesses is something that’s really important.”

    Some big businesses use their Facebook pages this way. Southwest Airlines LUV -3.47%, for example, has a “book now” button on its Facebook page that sends users to its website. Retailer J. Crew’s page links to its ecommerce site.

    Facebook is certainly forcing businesses and marketers to get more creative.

    “For brands who have put all their efforts into developing and growing a community on Facebook, the decline of organic reach feels like being denied access to their own fans. Brands now have to work harder to reach their target audiences, or, they simply have to cough up the money,” Moment.me CEO Dovev Goldstein recently told WebProNews. “For big brands with deep pockets, this might be less of a problem, but for small to medium businesses, this new development can seem to pose a big barrier to making social media work for them.”

    “While it might seem unfair to brands who have spent time and money growing their likes on Facebook, for social media marketers themselves, this development simply forces them to get more creative and clever in how they use the social medium as a way to promote their brand’s story,” he said. “Yes, the decline in organic reach does mean that social media marketing will have to be conducted differently, but it can also be looked at as a new opportunity to redefine how brands communicate in this space. Small businesses in particular have an opportunity to shine here. They can use their relatively small size to be hyper-targeted in their outreach, going after individual users as opposed to posting a promotional post designed to pull in more quantity over quality.”

    Is Video the Answer?

    Is video the answer to all of small businesses’ Facebook problems? Probably not, but all signs point to it being a pretty big help.

    The company has been constantly pushing video all year since its January announcement that video posts per person has increased 75% globally and 94% in the US. Numerous studies have since surfaced finding Facebook video to be a large focus of marketers and an effective tool. Video has trumped photos as the post format of choice for the best organic reach.

    “I think all marketers have the opportunity to do video, and that’s pretty exciting, including SMBs who would never be able to hire a film crew and buy a TV ad,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg during the company’s earnings call last week. “We’re seeing those put videos in. Over 1 million SMBs have posted videos and done really small ad buys around them. And that’s pretty cool because I don’t think there are probably 1 million advertisers who have bought TV ads in that same period of time.”

    A study from Visible Measures found that Facebook is more effective than YouTube for driving immediate growth in video viewership, though YouTube still dominates as the video’s life goes on.

    Organic Reach Picture Worsens, But Ad Effectiveness Gets Better

    In terms of organic reach in general, Facebook is still making algorithm changes that are most likely unfavorable for Pages. As recently as last week, Facebook announced yet more changes, one of which will show some people more content from their friends and less from Pages.

    On the paid side of things, however, the effectiveness of Facebook ads appears to only be getting better. We recently looked at a report from Nanigans, which found that click-through rates increased 17% quarter-over-quarter and about 260% year-over-year as advertisers have embraced different types of ad formats like video and multi-product ads.

    We also looked at a report fro Kinetic Social finding click-through rates to be up 266% year-over-year with the average CTR across all Facebook campaigns continuing to rise. Here’s what CTR looked like by ad type, placement and vertical:

    Facebook is Giving Businesses More Tools

    You can hate on Facebook for the organic reach thing all you want, but there’s no question that the company has released a multitude of new tools that businesses can potentially take advantage of. This includes a lot of ad tools, but also other things.

    On the ad side, there’s the Ads Manager app, which helps businesses manage their ad campaigns from their mobile devices. It also launched the Audience Network, its mobile ad network, which lets mobile apps monetize through Facebook’s active advertisers. Other semi-new ad-related offerings include local awareness ads, conversion lift measurement, and of course product ads.

    A couple months ago, Facebook announced that it reached 2 million active advertisers. At the time, we ran through many of the company’s latest ad offerings including, but not limited to these things.

    In January, Facebook launched Place Tips, which appear at the top of users’ News Feeds to give them information about the places they’re at.

    At the same time, the company announced that it’s testing Bluetooth beacons with select businesses that allow them to tap into this functionality. For brick-and-mortar businesses, this is a major area to keep an eye on as time goes on.

    Facebook has made numerous moves, which point to the social network becoming a better place for businesses and individuals to sell products. In addition to the multi-product ads, Facebook acquired shopping search engine TheFind to incorporate its technology into the Facebook ad ecosystem.

    Facebook also has a Buy button, which is still only available on a limited basis, but it did give advertisers call-to-action buttons in December, which include a “shop now” option. The company has also added new buying and selling features to Groups.

    Another recently launched a tool that has the potential to benefit small businesses is a new standalone Android app called Hello, which serves as a caller ID app, but also as a provider of local business search and information.

    Opportunities with Messenger

    It also added peer-to-peer payments to Messenger, not entirely unlike Square’s Square Cash offering, which that company recently turned into a small business marketing vehicle with $Cashtags.

    And speaking of Messenger, in addition to turning the product into its own developer platform (which could provide some business opportunities itself), Facebook announced last month that it is readying some business-specific features for it. Businesses will be able to connect with customers directly through this intimate messaging platform, potentially replacing email as a communication channel for some customers.

    As a business, you can enable your customers to connect with you via Messenger. If they elect to do so, you’ll be able to send them personalized updates and talk to them in real time.

    You can use custom layouts for order confirmation, shopping updates, etc. As the company says, “This lets your customers keep all their order info in one place and reach out to you if they need to change anything.”

    Facebook is hoping businesses will use this to improve their customer support experiences, which as studies have shown, are not particularly great when it comes to social media.

    Budget and Time are Obstacles

    Besides the reduction of organic reach on Facebook, small businesses’ biggest obstacles are their budgets and their time/resources for marketing.

    A study from BrightLocal found that 34% of small businesses allocate less than 10% of their marketing budgets to online channels, while 50% allocate less than 30% and only 29% allocate over 70%.

    “I found this figure a little perplexing when you consider the other responses SMBs gave,” CEO Myles Anderson told WebProNews. “75% said online was effective at bringing in new customers & 3 of top 4 most effective marketing channels are ‘digital’. Yet SMBs allocate a disproportionately low % of their marketing budgets online. I believe the reason is a combination of a few factors.”

    “Many business owners handle it themselves so don’t assign a monetary budget to online marketing,” he said. “The survey showed that 64% of business owners handle their internet marketing themselves. Online marketing isn’t applicable or doesn’t work for some businesses so they don’t invest. Some businesses rely solely on Word of Mouth to bring in new customers so don’t invest in online. Budgets are too low to play in the online arena.”

    The study found a direct correlation between the number of employees the business has and the monthly marketing budget.

    30% of those running the business on their own said online marketing was simply ‘not effective’. When you have to do everything, it’s not hard to understand why that might be. The fewer people a business has, the harder it is to do marketing right.

    According to another report from Thrive Analytics, 77% of small and medium-sized businesses don’t think they have the time or knowledge to manage their digital media efforts effectively, while 70% wish they could take advantage of digital media to help them expand their businesses and reach.

    That study did find that just after company websites (and we’re talking a one percentage point difference here), Facebook and/or social media sites are the biggest area of focus for budget growth planned by SMBs over the next twelve months.

    However, other research finds that small businesses haven’t increased their social presences at all over the past year:

    “When you think about our marketer growth, I think we have an ability to grow both the number of advertisers who use our platform, but also the percentage of their business that we get,” said Sandberg on the earnings call. “So 30 million small business pages continuing to grow [again, now 40 million]. We have an opportunity to turn those businesses into advertisers and marketers, and that’s what we’ve done successfully and we’re going to continue to focus on that. And we do that by building very simple ad products.”

    “There are some who spend a large portion of their budget on Facebook, but that’s actually very unusual,” she told investors. “For most people, even when they start spending with us, we’re a small portion of their budget. And when you look at the consumer time we get, we are not getting the equivalent amount of time or resources from our marketers really of any size, and therein lies our opportunity to grow.”

    Yes, Facebook wants you to advertise. The free ride to the News Feed is a thing of the past, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Facebook isn’t small business-friendly. The advertising opportunities are only improving, but even beyond that, the company is putting out a lot of interesting tools and features that businesses may be able to take advantage of.

    Either way, Facebook is clearly dedicated to trying to win over the minds of distraught small businesses. How do you think it’s doing? Discuss.

    Images via Facebook, Socialbakers, Nanigans, Kinetic Social, BrightLocal, Thrive Analytics, eMarketer

  • Here’s What Mark Zuckerberg Just Said About The Latest News Feed Update And Hosting Publisher Content

    Here’s What Mark Zuckerberg Just Said About The Latest News Feed Update And Hosting Publisher Content

    This week, Facebook announced its latest round of changes to the News Feed algorithm. Once again, it doesn’t exactly sound like great news for people running Facebook pages. While there were three different changes, the one that has people and businesses worried sees Facebook showing people more content from their friends and less from Pages, at least for those who don’t engage with Pages as much.

    The update doesn’t come as much of a surprise, as Facebook has made multiple changes over the past year and a half or so that have cost Pages a great deal of the organic reach of their posts. Still, that doesn’t exactly make it easier to swallow for Pages that have spent years gaining followings on the social network.

    There has also been a lot of talk about Facebook’s reported efforts to get publishers to let it host their content, which Facebook sees as a way to deliver content to users more quickly, particularly on mobile devices, where more and more of Facebook’s traffic is coming from. This has been another controversial topic.

    On Wednesday, Facebook reported its earnings for the first quarter, and on the ensuing conference call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked about both of these things in one question.

    He said that “the North Star” for Facebook in News Feed is that it wants to produce the best experience for users, and that businesses and professional content producers are not their main interest. They want tools for the businesses and content producers to make it easier to share good content, which he acknowledged is an important part of the experience, but basically, the priority is making sure users see what they want to see. They’re constant refining the algorithms.

    Yes, you’ve pretty much heard it before.

    “We go to a lot of lengths to make sure that we’re getting signals from people in our community to make sure that we’re doing this correctly, in addition to the different signals that we would get from seeing people use the products,” he said (via Seeking Alpha’s transcript). “We also do a lot of qualitative surveys to see what people, what makes – what people write in that they want to see from us, what people tell us is the most important thing that they saw in Facebook today or saw anywhere in the world today and what they would’ve wanted to have seen on Facebook. And our goal is to just constantly refine this and make it better and we’re going to keep on doing that because we think there’s a lot of upside and there’s a lot more that we can do.”

    “Now, at the same time, in order to make this experience good, there also needs to be good content in the system, right, so we need to make sure that people have the tools to able to share the moments that they care about,” he continued. “But if you’re a professional publisher, you need to have the ability to share a version of the content that you’re producing that you’re proud of, that can load quickly, that can be as rich as the tools enable people to see, and we’re working on a lot of different tools for that.”

    “And you can imagine that as the tools for any of this content get better, people taking photos, newspapers, writing news articles, advertisers, putting out ads for content that they want to sell, the better that content gets, the more people are excited to see it and then that informs the ranking in what the community qualitatively tells us that they want to see from us over time as well. So it’s just a constant cycle on that.”

    Zuckerberg talked more about organic reach in a November Q&A. He went into more detail about Facebook’s approach in that. Even though it was significantly ahead of this latest update, it’s worth taking a look at.

    Image via Facebook

  • Bug Leads To False Facebook Organic Reach Reporting

    A report from News Whip came out on Tuesday indicating that publishers experienced a significant drop-off in organic reach. This wouldn’t come as a huge shock to most people considering that Facebook has already significantly hurt organic reach for many Pages over the past year and a half or so.

    The report said:

    A staff member at one major UK publisher described the reduce in engagement as a ‘Faceboocalypse’, and said that his team had noticed what he described as “a change to news feed algorithm which drastically reduced the reach of many news sites’ posts”. Another major global publisher also acknowledged that they had seen a fall-off in Facebook engagement in recent weeks.

    NewsWhip’s data team noticed the reduction when analysing data for the biggest Facebook sites of February 2015. A wide range of top publishers, including BuzzFeed, the New York Times, Fox News and more seem to have been affected.

    Apparently the whole thing was just a reporting bug. Mashable shares a statement from the company:

    A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to Mashable that the issue was entirely about a glitch in its own method of collecting data, and that posts still reached the same amount of people as before.

    “We experienced an issue with Page Insights logging in February that failed to count some viral reach accurately. Importantly, actual delivery of posts was not affected by this issue; this was a reporting issue only. We identified and resolved this issue in early March and Page Insights are now correctly reporting organic reach. We apologize for any unintended impact this may have had to our partners,” the spokesperson said.

    Hopefully Facebook’s not pulling an April Fools’ prank. As Mashable points out, the false reporting led to some publications fearing that they had been demoted in Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, which again, given events from the past year, would not seem that far-fetched.

    While the bug may not have had any real consequences for publishers, it no doubt served as a reminder that you shouldn’t rely on Facebook too heavily for your traffic, because they could still take it away at any time.

    In fact, these days, Facebook is apparently trying to get publishers to let it host their content on Facebook itself. That’s a whole other discussion.

    Images via Facebook, News Whip

  • Facebook’s Organic Reach Murder Is Sending Brands to Instagram in Droves – But Are They Following a Sirens’ Song?

    At this point, brands probably feel like it would be more effective to don dinosaur costumes and shout on the street corner than to post stuff to Facebook. Brands’ organic reach has been murdered by the social network – a devastating blow almost two years ago and small cuts ever since. For those who refuse to pay-to-play, Facebook certainly feels like an echo chamber.

    Most of the time you’re lucky if ten – maybe 15 – percent of your Facebook followers see your posts. Unless you pay to promote them of course, but even then results can vary.

    Instagram, at least for the time being, offers brands a respite from this. If you’re a brand and you post a photo to Instagram, there’s a 100% chance that it’ll at least appear in your followers’ feeds. Whether or not they’ll engage is another story and completely up to how effective you can be – but at least your post has a fighting chance.

    One hundred precent organic reach is a beautiful thing – but in the end it could turn out to be a sirens’ song.

    Research firm L2 has a new report out about Instagram’s fast-paced growth among brands.

    “Facebook’s News Feed algorithm restricts the organic reach of content on the platform, and is particularly punishing for brands with large followings (500k+),” says L2 in its Instagram Intelligence Report. In contrast, Instagram communities defy gravity, with no negative correlation between a brand’s follower count and engagement rate.”

    L2 looked at the top 250 brands and found post frequency on Instagram is up 23 percent since the beginning of 2014.

    On average, brands post 9.3 times per week on Instagram, up from 7.5 times a week a year ago. On the other hand, brands are posting to Facebook less and less. Over the same period, average posts a week feel from 11.1 to 8.8.

    Plus, Instagram is growing rapidly. Brands’ follower counts grew 26 percent overall last year.

    A growing user base plus unlimited reach is enough to make any marketer swoon.

    Of course, there could be a storm on the horizon.

    “Enamored by 100 percent organic reach, brands have dialed up efforts on Instagram – post frequency has grown 23 percent over the last five quarters. Unlike the pay-to-play ethos of Facebook, pure sweat (namely, content testing and optimization) still drives meaningful results on Instagram. For brands, these are the salad days – motivated to both preserve user experience and create scarcity value, Instagram has kept advertising on the platform to a minimum,” says L2.

    And that’s true. Instagram has been purposefully cautious about crowding everyone’s feeds with sponsored posts. This gives brands’ regular, non-promoted content more visibility. When Instagram ramps up the paid ads efforts, and it’s inevitable, brands will be competing for eyes more than they’re used to doing.

    And then there’s the other issue – the one that could really hurt brands’ reach on Instagram. Algorithmic interference.

    Facebook owns Instagram, and you have to imagine that it’s at least a possibility that the company will adopt a similar feed strategy with Instagram as it’s done with Facebook – limit organic reach to force brands to buy ads.

    L2 agrees, and warns of this very thing:

    “Brands should expect that organic reach will be supplanted by pay-to-play (see: Facebook) on Instagram, and ensure the assets and skills being erected will stand when muscle (money) replaces sweat.”

    Ultimately, Instagram’s 100 percent organic reach and booming user growth could be a sirens’ song for brands. A long time ago, brand pages got used to relying on Facebook traffic and engagement – as it was free and easy. Then, Facebook pulled the rug out. Now that brands are heading to Instagram and beginning to rely on the visibility and high engagement rates is provides, could the same thing happen?

  • Should Photos Still Be Part of Your Facebook Strategy?

    Last month, SocialBakers shared some interesting findings about how different types of Facebook Page posts have been performing in terms of organic reach. Many were surprised to find that photos have become the least effective type of post in that regard, especially considering that a year before that, they were getting the most engagement.

    Have you found photos to be less effective for your own Page? Let us know in the comments.

    They looked at 4,445 Brand pages and more than 670,000 posts between October and February. Video was, by far, the best-performing type of post. This isn’t really a huge surprise given that Facebook has been talking about video growth so much, but the fact that photos were significantly lower than both statuses and links, is pretty interesting.

    Naturally, a lot of people have taken this to mean that photos just aren’t where it’s at anymore. OutboundEngine Director of Marketing Andrew Szatan and CEO Branndon Stewart have some thoughts about this mentality, which they shared with WebProNews.

    “This study isn’t surprising,” they said. “For some time now, Facebook has said that it intends to put increasing emphasis on video and this is evidence of that. While the study points to a meaningful trend for the social network, it’s still a little early to tell what this definitively means for brands. Based on the results of this study, the assumption that Facebook photos are ‘dead’ is greatly exaggerated. They still play a big role.”

    “For most businesses, the right move isn’t always to jump in and implement the ‘shiny new object’ — in this case, a newer feature on a social network,” the two added. “Those brands that have a dedicated social media team or an established visual presence should take advantage of this trend toward video to continue to provide compelling content to their fans, as it’s what they’ve come to expect. For smaller businesses that don’t have either of those things and that aren’t typically savvy when it comes to shooting high-quality, engaging videos, it doesn’t really make sense.”

    So how important are photos on Facebook these days? After all, based on the study, they’re not even performing as well as links or plain status updates.

    “Photos, like videos, are just another piece of the puzzle when it comes to having a well-balanced business page,” said Szatan and Stewart. “Facebook’s algorithm might now place an emphasis on original video, but that doesn’t mean it’s all you should post. Photos still have a great deal of importance for pages because of the ability to tag people in them. A good way into the News Feeds of other people is through their friends’ activity; photo tagging is a sure-fire way to do that. That being said, they’re still only part of the mix of content you should be posting to your page.”

    Organic reach is one thing, but when it comes to Sponsored Posts, photos must be favorable to a plain text status update, right?

    “Over the last few years, Facebook has become increasingly visual,” the two said. “Additionally, advertising itself is typically visual, so it’s safe to say that most sponsored posts should most likely include a photo. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that photos do better as sponsored posts. Let’s look at it in another way. Small business should use their brand pages as testing grounds. If a photo or another type of post does particularly well, then it should be considered for a sponsored post to increase reach and engagement. What’s more important here is that it’s not necessarily about the type of post — in this case, sponsored or organic post — but about the quality and relevance of the content.”

    A while back, Facebook said it would penalize photos with links in the captions as this had become a common tactic for trying to get more links in the News Feed. I personally still see some of this in my News Feed, so it’s unclear how much Facebook is really hurting these types of posts.

    Asked if they believe these types of photos have taken a hit, Szatan and Stewart said, “Not having anything other than personal observation to go on here, I would say that Facebook limited the amount of photos posted containing links. I tried this method for promoting new blog posts on our own page a little over a year ago and didn’t see any increase or decrease in post visibility or blog traffic. If this were a significant issue, it wasn’t on our radar.”

    On the decline in photo performance, Socialbakers itself said, “Because photos were the long-dominant post type, they are both the most common type of post and the most frequently promoted. That alone would be enough to make them less effective than they were at their peak, but coupled with the introduction of videos in Q3 2014, the decline in photo reach has been sudden.That all adds up to a lot of competition for decreasing space.”

    Here’s what the average fan reach for each type of post looks like:

    “The real growth point today is in videos,” it said. “While they are relatively more promoted than photos – 27% of all videos are promoted, compared to 17% of photos – there are so many more photos than videos that the new format is still far more effective at reaching audiences.”

    It won’t be surprising if the effectiveness of organically reaching the News Feed with videos declines after another year as saturation occurs there too. In January, Facebook said video was up 75% year-over-year, and SocialBakers found that brands were posting more Facebook videos than YouTube videos to Facebook, which was pretty much unthinkable a year before that.

    How important are photos to your Facebook strategy? Have you had to make some changes? Discuss.

    Images via SocialBakers

  • Facebook Organic Reach Compared By Post Type

    On Monday we heard about data from SocialBakers finding that photos, which used to be the most engaging type of Facebook post and perform the best, are now the kind of post that is seeing the least amount of organic reach. Since we wrote about it earlier, SocialBakers has made its data more easily accessible.

    Take a look at how the organic reach compares from format to format:

    “Because photos were the long-dominant post type, they are both the most common type of post and the most frequently promoted,” SocialBakers says in a blog post. “That alone would be enough to make them less effective than they were at their peak, but coupled with the introduction of videos in Q3 2014, the decline in photo reach has been sudden.That all adds up to a lot of competition for decreasing space.”

    “The real growth point today is in videos,” it adds. “While they are relatively more promoted than photos – 27% of all videos are promoted, compared to 17% of photos – there are so many more photos than videos that the new format is still far more effective at reaching audiences.”

    The firm also says that just looking at organic reach for brands’ Fans, not including non-Fans who also get post impressions, videos are still “much more effective than photos” with a 148% increase in reach.

    Data from SocialBakers from last April looked at three different sizes of Facebook Pages (1-99,999 fans, 100,000-999,999 fans, and 1,000,000+ fans), and found that photos saw the best engagement compared to links, statuses, and videos across all three. How things have changed.

    Last summer, Facebook announced a change to its News Feed algorithm, which would punish posts that were photos that linked to webpages in the caption. This had become a popular way for sites to try and drive traffic since photos, at the time, had a better chance of showing up in users’ News Feeds.

    Image via SocialBakers

  • What Not To Do To Increase Facebook Organic Reach

    Want to know what not to do to increase your organic reach on Facebook? Don’t post a bunch of photos thinking that’s what the News Feed algorithm likes best. That may have been true in the past, but not anymore. Less than a year ago, research showed that photos were your best bet for getting engagement on Facebook. Nowadays, photos are apparently about your worst bet for attaining significant organic reach on a Page post.

    Have you found this to be true with your own page? Let us know in the comments.

    This is according to data from Socialbakers as reported by Business Insider, which says photos aren’t doing as well as videos, links, or even text-only posts. It says:

    The Socialbakers data, which covered 4,445 Brand pages and more than 670,000 posts between October 2014 and February 2015, shows that video is now the most effective way to reach users in the newsfeed, driving more than twice as much reach as photo posts.

    Photos had the lowest organic reach (the percentage of a page’s fans that see a post, without the page owner needing to pay for advertising to boost the post further) over the period, with only an average of 3 out of every 100 (3.7%) page fans seeing a photo post. On the other hand, videos garnered an average organic reach of 8.7%. Links and text-only (defined by Socialbakers as “status”) posts follow with organic reach average’s of 5.3% and 5.8% respectively (although their positions in the organic reach hierarchy were interchangeable over the fourth quarter of 2014…).

    Take a look at how the organic reach compares from format to format:

    And here’s the average fan reach for each type:

    “Because photos were the long-dominant post type, they are both the most common type of post and the most frequently promoted,” SocialBakers says in a blog post. “That alone would be enough to make them less effective than they were at their peak, but coupled with the introduction of videos in Q3 2014, the decline in photo reach has been sudden.That all adds up to a lot of competition for decreasing space.”

    “The real growth point today is in videos,” it adds. “While they are relatively more promoted than photos – 27% of all videos are promoted, compared to 17% of photos – there are so many more photos than videos that the new format is still far more effective at reaching audiences.”

    The firm also says that just looking at organic reach for brands’ Fans, not including non-Fans who also get post impressions, videos are still “much more effective than photos” with a 148% increase in reach.

    Data from SocialBakers from last April looked at three different sizes of Facebook Pages (1-99,999 fans, 100,000-999,999 fans, and 1,000,000+ fans), and found that photos saw the best engagement compared to links, statuses, and videos across all three. How things have changed.

    Last summer, Facebook announced a change to its News Feed algorithm, which would punish posts that were photos that linked to webpages in the caption. This had become a popular way for sites to try and drive traffic since photos, at the time, had a better chance of showing up in users’ News Feeds. This change could be directly related to the fall of the organic reach of photo posts. If nothing else, the announcement led to a lot less of these types of photo posts.

    Facebook has, of course, been talking up the popularity of its native videos. Last month, Facebook said video was up 75% year-over-year. SocialBakers also found that brands were posting more Facebook videos than YouTube videos to Facebook, which a year prior was nearly unthinkable.

    That report also found that in January 2014, Facebook was getting just over half of all video interactions, but in December, Facebook videos received over 80%.

    The amount of video from people and brands in News Feed has increased 3.6x globally year-over-year. Since June, Facebook has averaged over a billion video views a day, and on average, over 50% of people who come to Facebook ever y day in the U.S. watch at least one video daily. 76% of people in the U.S. say they tend to discover the videos they do watch on Facebook.

    Have you seen the performance of your photo posts drop off significantly? Have you seen an increase in the reach of other post types? Let us know in the comments.

    Note: This post has been updated to include additional information.

    Images via Facebook, SocialBakers

  • Ogilvy & Mather Social Media Director On Overcoming Organic Reach Decline With Smart Data

    Ogilvy & Mather Social Media Director On Overcoming Organic Reach Decline With Smart Data

    Overcoming a decline in Facebook Page post reach is something businesses of all sizes have been grappling with over the past year. James Whatley, the social media director at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, London, recently wrote a blog post called “Organic Reach is Gone; Get Familiar with Smart Data.” We decided to pick his brain a bit more on smart data and how businesses can utilize it.

    In the post, Whatley wrote that 2015 is about smart data, rather than big data.

    “Facebook is probably one the smartest advertising platforms available to any business today,” Whatley tells WebProNews. “It has, at the last count, over 400 different dials you can adjust for finding your target consumer. If that sounds complicated, then you can let Facebook do the work for you. If you’ve got an eCRM database, upload your (secure) data to Facebook’s ad platform and it will create that ‘lookalike’ audience for you. It really is quite amazing.”

    On whether most businesses can overcome the loss of organic reach with smart data even without spending money, he says, “Without paying? Not really. However, as my colleague, Marshall Manson and I mention in our recent Social Trends document [see slide 19], in Facebook you can achieve quite a lot by spending very little. We were able to reach 100k *targeted* fans with only a £300 spend. For that amount, I would counsel small businesses to experiment and see what works best for their business.”

    Facebook recently gave Pages the ability to target organic posts.

    On how much this can help businesses that don’t have much room in their marketing budgets for sponsored posts, Whatley says, “Being able to boost (and target) posts that are already performing well is a great help to small businesses. The SMEs we work with tend to put aside a small ‘slush fund’ of media spend to work into their social channels as when these opportunities arise. Definitely worth doing.”

    In his blog post, Whatley wrote, “2015 is about smart data. With Facebook killing its organic reach, the free ride is over – and you’ll have to start remembering to commit media money to hit your social targets. This is not news. The thing that continuously blows minds is just how niche you can get with that detail. In the autumn of 2014, one enterprising data monkey even managed to get his targeting so perfect that he set about specifically serving ads to his roommate as part of an elaborate prank. That’s mind-blowing.”

    “In 2015, it would be great if the creative industries could get familiar with the smart data available to them,” he aded. “There were a few examples recently (British Airways’ “magic of flying” stands out as one, The Sun’s “Dream Team” as another), but expect to see more in the year ahead. Many more.”

    He also commented on the British Airways example to WebProNews, saying, “It’s born from a single insight: children love the magic of flying (and adults have forgotten). When a child sees a plane fly over they point and marvel at the wonder of it all. Show that to someone and they too remember that magical moment. But to make it work in a digital ad space? We checked everything from the call sign of the plane to the cloud cover over the ad space. If everything matched up, if the data was right, we ran the ad.”

    Check out the video:

    This is, of course, just one example of a major airline utilizing so-called smart data, but it gives you an idea at what can be accomplished with data and some creativity. Obviously this is a bit elaborate for the average small business, but as Whatley says, we’re going to be seeing a lot more interesting uses of smart data, and marketing will be all the more interesting (and possibly effective) for it.

    Image via James Whatley (Twitter)

  • Yelp Buys Eat24 For $134 Million

    Yelp Buys Eat24 For $134 Million

    Yelp just announced that it has acquired Eat24, the web and app-based online food ordering service that made headlines last year when it “broke up” with Facebook. The deal is valued at $134 million, consisting of stock and cash. The cash part is $75 million.

    Yelp says it will use the acquisition to drive daily engagement in the restaurant vertical. It will also expand Eat24’s services to a million U.S. restaurants on the Yelp platform. Eat24 currently provides online delivery and takeout ordering services to 20,000 restaurants in over 1,500 cities. It has a website and app that feature 24/7 live chat, email, and phone support.

    “As more food ordering transactions move online, further integrating Eat24 will enhance our user experience with an easy-to-use product and service that allows our large consumer audience to transact directly with businesses,” said Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. “Eat24 has developed a great solution and unique service that has already added great value to the Yelp Platform. With this acquisition, we gain more tools and expertise to help engage our users from discovery through transaction in a key vertical for Yelp.”

    “We’re excited to join the Yelp team to deliver an even better consumer experience inside this top destination for finding local businesses,” said Eat24 co-founder and CEO Nadav Sharon. “Yelp has an impressive ability to connect its users directly with businesses. This is an incredible opportunity to further connect with Yelp’s highly engaged users and to expand our reach to even more local businesses on its platform.”

    As mentioned, Eat24 made quite a few headlines nearly a year ago, even drawing mainstream news coverage from outlets like CNN. It wrote a very public “break-up” letter to Facebook in response to the decline in organic reach it saw for its Page posts (as many others have seen). The brand had previously had over 70,000 Facebook fans.

    The story came at a time when businesses were growing very frustrated with the Facebook issue, and Eat24 became something of a cult hero for small period of time there, but it’s not clear that too many other brands followed suit. Either way, a couple of months later, Eat24 provided an update to say that things were going splendidly without a Facebook Page, and it would seem that it has never looked back. As of today, the Facebook link on Eat24’s website still points to the break-up letter. It will be interesting to see if Yelp requires the brand to embrace the social network again.

    Yelp released its quarterly earnings last week, reporting net revenue of $109.9 million. In light of the acquisition, Yelp has increased its revenue outlook for Q1, expecting it to be in the range of $118.5 million to $120.5 million.

    Yelp is also beefing up its sales staff.

    Image via Eat24

  • Facebook Forces Marketers To Get More Creative

    Facebook Forces Marketers To Get More Creative

    Businesses using Facebook for marketing have been dealt a pretty bad hand over the past year. Facebook has drastically cut down the amount of organic reach Page posts typically receive, meaning fewer of any given Page’s fans are likely to see an any given update from that Page, which they went out of their way to “like”.

    Have you found ways to overcome a decline in organic reach on Facebook? Let us know in the comments.

    Mark Zuckerberg himself said in a Q&A in November, “I just want to express some empathy in that we understand what it’s like to be a business – especially from being a startup and trying to reach your customers, and reach people and communicate, and grow, and we care really deeply about the different changes in our product, and how that affects all the businesses and people who are using fan pages. And we take it really seriously when any product change that we do will change or have an impact on someone’s business.”

    Then last month, Facebook made some algorithm changes that would hurt posts it finds to be too overly promotional. These are the examples Facebook shared in its announcement:

    With Facebook throwing all of this at Pages, what’s a business to do? We had a conversation with Dovev Goldstein, CEO of Moment.me, which provides social media advertising services. He shared some thoughts about how businesses should be reacting to Facebook’s harsh changes.

    How are brands most affected by the decline of organic reach?

    “For brands who have put all their efforts into developing and growing a community on Facebook, the decline of organic reach feels like being denied access to their own fans. Brands now have to work harder to reach their target audiences, or, they simply have to cough up the money,” Goldstein says. “For big brands with deep pockets, this might be less of a problem, but for small to medium businesses, this new development can seem to pose a big barrier to making social media work for them.”

    How is the social media marketing industry affected by the decline of organic reach?

    “Given that social media marketing budgets are up again this year (even with Facebook announcing their plans for promotional posts well in advance of the new year), it seems as though the social media marketing industry isn’t overly fazed by this latest development,” Goldstein says. “We also have to remember that social media doesn’t begin and end with Facebook, and fellow giants Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram (even if it is owned by Facebook) and LinkedIn continue to be important.”

    “While it might seem unfair to brands who have spent time and money growing their likes on Facebook, for social media marketers themselves, this development simply forces them to get more creative and clever in how they use the social medium as a way to promote their brand’s story. Yes, the decline in organic reach does mean that social media marketing will have to be conducted differently, but it can also be looked at as a new opportunity to redefine how brands communicate in this space. Small businesses in particular have an opportunity to shine here. They can use their relatively small size to be hyper-targeted in their outreach, going after individual users as opposed to posting a promotional post designed to pull in more quantity over quality.”

    With organic reach on Facebook all but dead, what are some of the best alternatives for free social media marketing?

    “As I mentioned above, one of the best alternatives for getting the most out of your social media outreach is by being hyper-targeted,” he continues. “Use a social media analytics tool that allows you to identify who are the most the relevant target users who also have the most reach and followers. Official ‘influencers’ might cost money, but just reaching out to someone with a lot of followers and friends and encouraging them to interact with your brand in a public way can have a huge impact.”

    “Ultimately, the best way to circumvent the decline in organic reach is to encourage users to ‘Share’ instead of just ‘Like’. Moving forward, it will be imperative to set up the infrastructure to make more authentic interactions snowball to turn each contact into an ongoing conversation and an engaged connection.”

    Do businesses absolutely have to spend more money on social media to have success?

    “Not necessarily, but they may have to spend more time,” he says. “Either way, businesses should be making an investment in social media if they want to have success in today’s digital age. Social media is one of the many digital channels customers interact with on a daily basis, and from a customer engagement standpoint, you’ll want to engage with your biggest supporters and fans where they interact the most. Having said this, in order to get the most out of your social media investment, being (pro)active and responsive is essential. Just being present on social media is not enough to have a positive outcome, responsiveness to customers is the key to success.”

    Can businesses afford not to spend money on Facebook?

    “Facebook is definitely a place many businesses will want to focus some of their resources, but the investment doesn’t have to be in paid Facebook services to deliver on their social media goals,” he says. “Moreover, as I said above, there are plenty of other social media platforms available. For those businesses who really need Facebook, however, there are tools out there which can help maximise the impact of any money businesses might spend on the platform. Above all, having a well thought-out strategy is the key to ensuring you don’t end up spending more than intended.”

    Can a business find social media success entirely without Facebook?

    “It’s entirely possible for companies to find social media success without using Facebook,” says Goldstein. “It all comes down to the type of business you have and who your customers are. Depending on who your target market is – the demographics of your customers, their gender, and age – will all be factors in determining which specific social platform is best for engaging your audience. Let’s not forget that some of the biggest brands in the world – like Apple for example – are not even on Facebook.”

    Last week, Facebook released its quarterly earnings report. The company’s ad revenue was up 53% year-over-year.

    Be sure to check out our recent interview with OutboundEngine CEO Branndon Stewart about how SMBs can deal with Facebook’s News Feed changes.

    Does your marketing budget have room for a lot of paid Facebook posts or are you pursuing alternatives? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

  • Could These New Facebook Features Help Offset Organic Reach Decline?

    Facebook has fallen out of favor with a lot of publishers thanks to the ever-decreasing organic reach it’s providing for their posts. Some new features from the company could help ease the pain, however. This week alone has seen an important expansion of Facebook search, the Trending feature, and some new post targeting options.

    Could these things help publishers in a significant enough way to offset the damage done by lost organic reach? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    Facebook has really been taking its time rolling out features for Graph Search, but some very important improvements were made this week with the addition of mobile support (on iOS for now) and perhaps more importantly, the previously announced addition of post search, which enables users to find content from Facebook posts by keyword. In other words, you can finally search Facebook in a way similar to how you would search Google, except that rather than plain old web results and quick answers, you’ll get content from your network (Facebook has indicated that public posts outside of your network will likely come eventually).

    This is a feature that has been lacking from Facebook for a very long time, and it definitely opens up some new visibility options for publishers and sites. Let the great Facebook SEO experiment begin!

    Expect to see a lot of content about how to better reach people through Facebook Search in the coming year. One thing is for certain. Getting Facebook likes is important again (if it ever stopped being so in the first place). Every person that likes your page is a potential member of your search audience.

    After the search changes, Facebook announced its updates to the Trending feature. Once again, this includes mobile availability, but rather than iOS, this is only for Android for now. Mobile isn’t necessarily the most noteworthy part of this announcement either though.

    Trending now comes with five different sections for users to browse: Articles, In the Story, Friends and Groups, Near the Scene, and Live Feed.

    The Articles section will provide you with coverage of the topic from various news organizations.

    The In the Story section shows posts from people who are actually part of the story. Facebook has already been pretty good at that with its Newswire services for journalists, though the topics are limited. This could provide exposure for more relevant content that’s actually from Facebook itself.

    The Friends and Groups section shows what people in your network are saying about the topic, making the trending topic more relevant to the user on a personal level.

    The Near the Scene section is exactly what it sounds like, and shows you posts from people near where the story is unfolding, providing an additional layer of geographical relevance. You could see where this would be helpful in a story like Ferguson, for example.

    Finally, the Live Feed section just shows you a real-time stream of reactions from people around the world, basically like Twitter.

    There will continue to be a feed below the new sections like the one that’s been there. This displays posts Facebook deems relevant, ranked by engagement, timeliness and other factors. Facebook isn’t making any changes to how it determines what’s actually trending.

    Publishers may see more traffic from the Friends and Groups section if people have shared their content. Obviously the Articles category provides another potential source, as does the Live Feed.

    Then you’ve got the latest announcement, which is specifically aimed at publishers. This includes interest targeting, post end date, smart publishing, and improvements to Insights.

    “To help you reach precisely the right people, we now offer the ability to target posts to a subset of the people that like your Page,” explains Facebook. “For example, a publisher can use Interest Targeting to post a story about a sports game that will only be shown to people that like the teams playing.”

    That’s huge. If Facebook is only going to show your post to a small percentage of your fans, the least it can do is show it to the right percentage.

    This is available to all Pages that have enabled the Targeting and Privacy setting. For now, it’s desktop only.

    The Post End Date feature lets Page admins specify a day and time to stop showing a post in News Feed.

    “This tool prevents people from seeing out-of-date posts in News Feed, but posts will continue to appear on your Page,” Facebook explains. “For instance, a publisher can use this to remove yesterday’s weather report from News Feed.”

    It’s a little sad that Facebook can’t remove yesterday’s weather report from News Feed itself, but still, it could be a helpful feature in some cases. It’s also available to all Pages that have enabled the Targeting and Privacy setting, and is only on desktop for now.

    The Smart Publishing feature identifies and publishes stories that are popular with people on Facebook. If you enable it, frequently shared links to your site can appear in News Feed for people who like your Page. These will not actually appear on your Page, but Facebook provides a new dashboard in Insights to let you see analytics, moderate comments, and choose which you want to post to your Page.

    This is actually another pretty big feature for publishers because while organic reach from Page posts has indeed been on rapid decline, Facebook’s referrals to websites have done nothing but grow. That means a lot of links are obviously being shared, and this can help you get more out of that.

    You’ll have to turn this feature on by enabling Smart Publishing from the Publisher Tools section within Page settings.

    Finally, Facebook has added improvements to Domain Insights to show how Pages and social plugins drive traffic. There’s a new Top URLs section and a way to segment data for specific time ranges. They also fixed a bug that caused third-party analytics tools to undercount the percentage of their organic traffic from Facebook.

    Whether or not all of this will actually offset the damage done by the great organic reach decline remains to be seen, but I don’t think many would argue that these tools aren’t improvements over what was already available.

    What do you think? Will these tools significantly help websites get more out of Facebook? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Images via Facebook